


Oh Captain, My Captain

by cyren2132



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Grief/Mourning, Multi, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-03
Updated: 2019-11-03
Packaged: 2021-01-21 10:16:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,490
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21297827
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cyren2132/pseuds/cyren2132
Summary: Thanos is dust. His army is gone. And with a snap of his fingers, so is Steve Rogers.
Relationships: Pepper Potts/Tony Stark, Steve Rogers/Tony Stark
Comments: 4
Kudos: 51
Collections: Trick or Treat Exchange 2019





	Oh Captain, My Captain

**Author's Note:**

  * For [iwasanartist](https://archiveofourown.org/users/iwasanartist/gifts).

> For Iwasanartist, who wondered what if Steve took the stones from Thanos instead. Title is from "O Captain! My Captain!" by Walt Whitman. Read it [here (Poetry Foundation).](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45474/o-captain-my-captain)

_“I am inevitable.”_

The words were gravelly and full of static. Booming enough to be picked up on someone’s comms. Overshadowed by the clang of metal on metal.

_“Not today.”_

Steve’s voice was clear and loud and his snap echoed across the compound. Tony still didn’t know how he’d wrestled the stones away from Thanos but as the ravages of battle turned to dust, he couldn’t help but smile. It was shortlived.

_“Steve? Steve?!”_

_“Cap? Oh, god. Hey, we need a medic! ”_

Tony turned circles until he found them, Barnes and Wilson huddled against wreckage next to a mass that couldn’t have been Steve. Strange’s cloak carried him over the debris, setting him down smoothly. Tony barely remembered going airborne, but he remembered Strange’s voice.

_“I’m sorry.”_

He didn’t know if it was damage to his gear or a stuttering short circuit in his own brain that cut his flight short, dropping him back down on one knee. He didn’t have the strength to rise, but it seemed everyone else on the battlefield had followed suit, kneeling in the dust and the dirt as their captain slipped away.

* * *

The shower had helped. Crowding around a monitor with Pepper to say goodnight to an oblivious Morgan, who only wanted to talk about all the fun games she’d played with Uncle Happy helped more. But there was a part of Tony that still felt frayed and ragged and in need of patching. Maybe that’s what he was looking for as he walked down the halls of the Avengers beta site, the third point in a triangle made up of the compound and Tony’s cabin.

Bots kept it up, but it had never really been used. There was something about it that felt lifeless despite the array of occupants that arrived at its door, dirty and battle weary. Some of them glanced up as he walked the corridor. Rhodey took a step forward, but he had decades of reading Tony’s expressions under his belt and stopped in his tracks.

Wilson was the only person to offer any opposition as he entered the corridor to the cold rooms.

“Hey, man. Someone’s in there right now. Maybe give a minute?”

Tony ducked away from the hand that tried to land on his shoulder, spun smoothly away and walked backward for a few paces as he spoke.

“Sorry Birdman. My house, my rules.”

Wilson nodded and stood down with a look of sad resignation on his face.

The door opened quietly. Nothing in a Stark facility creaked, squeaked or groaned unless he wanted it to. A curtain separated the entrance from the rest of the room, and on the other side Tony could hear shaking breaths and light sobs. Through a gap he could see Barnes, doubled over in a chair, his head buried in Steve’s chest as his arms outstretched, fingers clinging to the fabric of his uniform.

Tony slid aside the curtain noisily, and Barnes looked up, bolted up and took a step backward, hands raised.

“I don’t…I’m not looking for trouble,” he said. His voice was thick. His eyes were red-rimmed and Tony wanted to hate him and blame him for everything. But while he may have been a hundred-year-old assassin, in that moment he looked like a child. A child who’d lost his best friend. He said nothing.

“I’ll go.”

Tony stepped forward and looked down at Steve and back up to Barnes, whose hand was on the curtain when when he spoke.

“He always said it wasn’t you, you know.” He didn’t elaborate, but from the way Barnes looked down at his feet before sparing a glance for Steve out of the corner of his eye, Tony knew he knew.

“He always saw the best in me.” Barnes swallowed. “I wasn’t in the driver’s seat, but I was there. I didn’t break through and stop it. Howard… He was my friend, too. I don’t know what that says about me. I am sorry, though, for everything I did to you.”

Tony offered a curt nod, it was all he could manage all things considered, and watched the swaying curtain until Barnes was gone. That was when he really looked at Steve.

Bruce had carried him off the battlefield. Somebody had cleaned him, washing away all the blood and sweat and grime so the only signs of injuries were faint burns traveling up from under his collar and around his ear, like the serum had tried so hard to heal him. In a different reality, he could have been sleeping.

Tony sank down into the chair Barnes had been using.

“God, you’re so fucking stupid,” he said. “You had the stones. Why didn’t you run? Or throw them all in different directions? Toss them into Lang’s machine, or…” Or what? What could Steve have done differently that would have taken Thanos off the board? That would have stopped the Leviathans and everything else that was attacking the compound?

_It was the only way._

Tony reached out and laid a hand over Steve’s. It was cold. He’d been warm the last time they’d touched, a reunifying handshake that washed away the past and hoped for a better future. Before that…hell, there was too much anger, he could barely remember what it felt like to drop his nanobot casing in Steve’s hand. But that wasn’t a memory he wanted anyway.

Steve’s hand started to warm, and if Tony closed his eyes he could pretend it wasn’t just his own body heat radiating and bouncing back at him. If he closed his eyes, he could remember that night. God, it must have been nearly 10 years ago, just before everything went to hell. Pepper had left a week before. Tony’d spent most of the interim in a drunken stupor, and he’d barely noticed when Steve walked through the door and sat down at the bar, pulling an array of notes and scribbles for the September Project speech out from under glasses and bottles and stacking them neatly to the side.

“Cap,” he’d finally said. “How goes it at Avengers HQ?”

“It goes. How are things here?”

“Drunk.”

“I see that,” Steve said. Tony had braced himself for a lecture or a stern face, but instead Steve grabbed a tumbler and poured himself a little bit of Johnnie Walker Blue. At first they’d just sat in silence but it didn’t take long for Tony’s brain to start turning over everything that had happened and soon he was spilling his guts about Pepper and nanites and Iron Man and finally allowing himself to feel angry.

“I mean come on! It’s not like I’m getting plastered at parties 24/7, I’m trying to save the goddamn world for fuck’s sake.”

“I hear you,” Steve said. “Sound like a real rough time.”

“Yeah.” Tony reached for the bottle when Steve’s hand landed on his wrist, almost like Tony’s was now.

“Maybe you’ve had enough?”

It wasn’t an order. It wasn’t a judgment. It was just a suggestion. And something about it had caught Tony off guard.

“Yeah. Yeah, maybe.” Tony went to check his watch, but he wasn’t wearing it. He grabbed for his phone, but it wasn’t in his pocket. He squinted at the clock over the bar, but the numbers refused focus themselves.

“It’s 2:04.”

“In the morning?”

“Nope.”

“Well damn. I should get to b-” Tony had spun around, attempting to ease off his bar stool and carry himself off the bedroom, but gravity had other ideas and he was tilting dangerously close to falling down drunk when Steve grabbed his arm and leaned him upright.

“All right, I gotcha,” Steve said. “Bed?”

“Yeah,” Tony said through a snort, but they’d barely made it to the living quarters when he could feel his world start to go topsy turvy again. “Y’know what? Who needs a bed when you’ve got a $15,000 couch,” he slurred and let physics do the rest as he fell onto the cushions. His legs tangled up with Steve's as he went, throwing him off balance too. They landed in a pile, and Tony had erupted in a fit of giggles with Steve’s weight pressing into him and his hands on either side of Tony’s body.

“Careful, Cap,” onlookers might get the wrong idea.” He pursed his lips in what might have been a flirty joking air kiss if they weren’t so close. But they were so close, and his lips landed for just a fraction of a second on Steve’s before pulling back. He’d expected Steve’s mouth to be hard. A firm line full of disappointment. Maybe even disgust. Definitely a touch of embarrassment.

But Steve was none of that. His lips were soft like his expression. They parted for breath and Tony pushed himself upward, stealing that breath and kissing him with everything he had, because he was sure at any second the hands at his side would land squarely on his chest, pushing him away.

At first Steve stilled, probably from shock. Then his jaw relaxed. His mouth began to move against Tony’s, not just receptive but reciprocal and more amazing and tender than it had any right to be. Tony raised a hand, slipped it under the hem of Steve’s T-shirt and his fingertips landed on smooth warm skin for just a second before Steve broke the kiss with a shake of his head, moved Tony’s hand and sat up.

“Sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry, Tony.”

“Why? ‘Cause I’m a little tipsy? How noble of you, Captain.” He tried to sit up, but ‘a little tipsy’ was probably an understatement and he’d ended up holding his arm outstretched until Steve grabbed it and hauled him upright. “Besides, I kissed you first.”

“It’s not that, Tony.”

“What then? It’s not the 1940s anymore. No one’s going to come throw Captain America and Iron Man in jail for fooling around on an obscenely expensive couch.” He forced himself under Steve’s arm and nestled in next to him, one hand dropping lazily on Steve’s thigh. Steve shifted uncomfortably and Tony frowned. “Or is it me?” he said slowly as he sat up straighter. “Good enough to test the bi-curious waters but not enough to keep your good name intact?”

“What? No!” Steve said quickly. “It’s not that at all.”

“Then what?”

“It’s Pepper.”

“Pepper? I don’t know where you’ve been all this time, but we’re done. She split like the only valid way to eat a banana.”

“Yeah, but…” Steve stopped to collect his thoughts and Tony could feel his momentary anger shifting to curiosity. “I know things are bad right now, but when I see the two of you together…you’re perfect. I really think you two belong together, and I don’t want to be in the way when you figure it out.”

“Huh.” He didn’t believe it, but he believed Steve believed it. “I think that’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.”

“I can be nice,” Steve said. He smiled and something about it made Tony’s insides feel warm and fuzzy. Well, it might have been the booze, but he liked to think it was Steve.

“Careful,” he said, snuggling deeper into Steve’s side. “Flash those pearly whites too often and you’ll be fending off all of New York’s eligible bachelorettes. Or bachelors, whatever floats your boat.”

Steve had laughed softly and said something about having his own nonogenarian to pine after, but Tony missed the rest as he slipped into sleep.

They didn’t see each other again until after Lagos, and in the ensuing clusterfuck, that night was never spoken of again. They fought about the Accords. They fought about Barnes. And then they just fought.

But Steve had been right about one thing. By the time he got back from Siberia and made his way home, Pepper was there, waiting at his door. She was solace and hope and maybe the only good thing left in the world.

“I just couldn’t stand the idea of you being alone right now,” she’d said. And she realized that had to mean something. So they’d figured it out. They’d made it work. And when the universe turned to ash around him, she was his saving grace.

Tony stared at Steve. God, no offense to Coulson, but that SHIELD produced 2012 uniform was the worst.

“Listen up, Spangles, ‘cause I’m only going to say this once,” he said. “You were right. And I’m sor-” He choked on the apology. God, they’d wasted so much time. And the bit of mending they’d managed in between planning and pulling off a time heist just wasn’t enough. He wanted more from the past and for the future. It wasn’t fair.

Tony pulled his hand away from Steve, rested his elbows on his knees and bowed his head, burying his face in his hands. Metal rings slid on the rod as someone pushed the curtain aside. Tony looked up, letting his folded hands press against one cheek.

“Hey, Pep.”

She nodded at him, but stared at Steve as she entered the room.

“He looks…He almost looks like he could be sleeping.”

“Yeah. Believe me, I would _Sleeping Beauty_ and _Snow White_ the shit out of this moment if I thought it would help.”

She tilted her head at him before walking around, leaning down and kissing the back of his neck before resting her head on his shoulder.

“Maybe it will,” she said softly. Tony crinkled his brow and craned his neck around to look at her, a silent “What?” written all over his face. “I’ve never known him to second guess himself,” Pepper continued. “He made his choice. He’d probably make it a thousand more times if he had to. The rest of us just have to figure out how to live with it. Whatever that looks like.”

Tony nodded and stood, taking a step closer to the table. It all still barely seemed real. _Why am I saying goodbye? This isn’t even real._ Nonetheless, Tony bent down and pressed a kiss to Steve’s forehead. Reality felt like ice, making his lips tremble and his body shiver. He broke the kiss, tilting to touch his own forehead to Steve’s.

“I’m sorry,” he said softly and shakily as a tear dripped from his eyes to Steve’s, rolling hot down his temple and getting lost in his hair.

It was all too real. Tony deep a deep breath, straightened and stepped away, letting the air out of his lungs in a huff as he swiped at his face. His brain searched for a quip or a reference to make about dwarves, princes or spinning wheels but all that came out of his mouth was a choked stutter that brought Pepper to him.

She wrapped her arms around him, held him close and let his head rest on her shoulder. For everything that was and could never be again, Tony wept.


End file.
